[In the following review, Smith argues that Buck's half of Friend to Friend is more penetrating than that of Carlos Romulo because it adds something new to the East-West dialogue.]

Toward the close of [Friend to Friend] Pearl Buck quotes an Asian as reminding her that "the criticisms of enemies need not be regarded, but faithful are the wounds of a friend." The civil but open criticism that pervades this entire attempt by an Oriental and an American to explore the troubled psychological relations between the United States and the Afro-Asian world makes of its brief pages two deep, reciprocally-inflicted, faithful wounds.

Carlos Romulo, Philippine Ambassador to the United States, opens the discussion. His thesis is not unexpected. America's relations with the Afro-Asian nations are of decisive importance. Consequently it is imperative not only that Americans shed all feelings of superiority over these peoples and inclinations to dominate them, but also that they remedy their "underdeveloped" understanding of the East. Understanding does not require agreement, but it does require knowledge of what makes other peoples tick (the author's colloquialism).

Specifically, with respect to Asians and Africans it requires awareness of the psychological scars left by generations of Western colonialism and the mental set of peoples flexing their muscles for the first time in modern history. It demands an appreciation of "the grinding power of poverty, which has new meaning every mealtime to angry human beings who care little for ideological disputes when their stomachs are empty; and the heritage of pride and resentment, the curious mixture of self-reliance and inferiority complex, the dreams of glory and the days of disappointment, the ambition and the fatalism, all of which are combined in the Asian and African world."

All this is true, so true that to many readers it is likely to sound obvious. I disagree. What Ambassador Romulo says along these lines we still very much need to hear.

A few points which relate to the complexity of the problems considered in Ambassador Romulo's half of Friend to Friend are:

1. Mr. Romulo's message adds up to a plea for understanding. I have just affirmed that this is desperately needed. But what else? When psychologists got to the point of reducing virtually everything in child care to love, a Bettelheim was needed to write Love Is Not Enough. A parallel volume is now needed in international relations titled Understanding Is Not Enough. Did our own Civil War spring essentially from misunderstandings between North and South?

Or suppose we were to understand Communism perfectly, would this resolve our conflict with it? Mr. Romulo is excellent on understanding, but on what is needed in addition he is cursory. Equality and respect seem to be his only other general recommendations; but would observance of these settle the problems of power politics? Our respect for the Russians has risen astronomically, but this does not seem to have quieted our difficulties with them.

2. One of Mr. Romulo's brief chapters deals with myths he thinks are clouding America's understanding of the world situation. One of these—the notion that the American way is the only way to freedom—is most pertinent. But for the rest it is not a perceptive list. Some beliefs—e.g., that absolute weapons are so terrible that we ought not to fight to defend our freedom, or that the United States and the Soviet Union will be socially indistinguishable before long—are not sufficiently widespread to be classed as important American myths. With others his analysis is too summary to show that they are myths instead of truths.

3. In providing aid Mr. Romulo thinks the United States should not require "that the recipient country should conform to certain concepts and practices that may be valued in America but are irrelevant to the recipient country's institutions." Granted. But the inclusion of the word "irrelevant" suggests that there may be some conditions the United States should require. What are they? Capitalism? Democracy? Free institutions? Honest administration? Benefit to the masses? Feasible plans for national economic progress? Can a nation insist on any conditions without opening itself to charges of interference and domination?

4. Mr. Romulo thinks it is desperately important for the United States to take the initiative in making peace. "The peoples of the world must be shown that America really wants peace and to do that she must not content herself by replying to Bulganin's or Khrushchev's letters." But how Mr. Romulo can pass in five sentences from this statement to praising "the inflexibility … and uncompromising … position of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in dealing with the Kremlin [as] a tower of strength of the free world" I cannot understand. I thought it was this posture more than anything else that is making Asians and Africans wonder if the United States is actually the world's leader with respect to peace.

Pearl Buck's half of the book is more penetrating. One of the real blessings of genuine friendship is the conditions it provides for self-understanding. In this sense Mr. Romulo's contribution serves its purpose admirably, for it prompts Mrs. Buck to one of the most insightful brief probings of the American temper I have seen. It is here, in asking why we appear as we do to the rest of the world, that Friend to Friend actually advances the East-West dialogue. Where Mr. Romulo says things more Americans need to hear, Mrs. Buck says some new things. What things, specifically, may appropriately be left for the reader to discover from the book itself. Here I will only say that they add up to a strong justification of America—a bit too strong. I am inclined to think. But this flaw, if it be such, is outweighed by two virtues: the freshness of Mrs. Buck's observations which I have just mentioned, and their healthy antidote to the excessive self-condemnation into which many Americans, this reviewer included, tend periodically to slip.

Mr. Romulo thinks that if America were ever to found an empire it would have to be "an empire of the mind and heart." Regardless of who founds it, this book looks toward such an empire.